There are two versions of this piece: one, here, a conference paper, and the other in the new edition of Jacobin. The Jacobin piece is shorter and stripped of its academic accessories, and much of the section on the value of money, but it’s not entirely an abridged version – I changed the tone a little, and added a Joan Robinson quote someone reminded me of. I’ve had a lot of responses to this, so a follow-up will hopefully follow.
In 2009, UC Berkeley Economics Professor and former Clinton adviser Brad DeLong took a pot shot at our David Harvey on his blog. Headlined ‘Department of “Huh?”’, and beginning “Why neoclassical economics is an absolutely wonderful thing”, the post quotes 11 straight paragraphs from a Harvey essay, which DeLong proceeds to ridicule.
For DeLong, the essay is contentless waffle. It strings together economic concepts without making an economic argument. He would call it “intellectual masturbation”, he writes, except that it “does not feel good at all”. Only in the eleventh paragraph does he find “the suggestion of a shadow of an argument”. Here Harvey argues that the US stimulus package is bound to fail because the deficit needs to be financed by foreign powers, and the amount of Treasury bonds it will be able to sell to the likes of the Chinese central bank will not fund a big enough stimulus. DeLong responds that this is a question that requires a theory of the bond market and interest rates, which Harvey does not provide: “The question is thus not can government deficit spending be financed… the question is at what interest rate will financial markets finance that deficit spending.” [DeLong, 2009]
[More: Zombie Marx and Modern Economics (pdf)]
Scandalum Magnatum 
For a very different view, which deals with the moral issues that Beggs ignores, see Reclaiming Marx’s “Capital”: The Movie, @